National preview: As BCS fades away ... pros, cons debated

Bill Hancock, the executive director of the BCS with Alabama coach Nick Saban after the 2012 championship, was a staunch supporter of the BCS over a playoff. This past spring Hancock, Delany and the game's other powerbrokers insist the playoff format will not expand any time soon to an eight- or 16-team tournament, citing a $5.6-billion, 12-year broadcast deal with ESPN for the national championship game and widespread opposition among member institutions to extending the postseason. ANDY LYONS, GETTY IMAGES

Somewhere over Siberia the great BCS debate went global.

Bowl Championship Series executive director Bill Hancock was flying to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing when he was confronted by a fellow passenger.

“I hate the BCS,” the man snapped at Hancock

For several minutes the mild-mannered Hancock patiently explained the pros of the postseason format and why a playoff for major college football wouldn't work. It didn't matter. Even from 30,000 feet, the view of BCS didn't look any better to Hancock's fellow passenger.

“I still hate BCS,” the man huffed after Hancock was finished.

With the 2014 BCS National Championship Game at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 6, the BCS era, a period of both unprecedented controversy and growth in college football, will come to a close and give way next season to a four-team playoff format that will continue to include the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls.

The playoff format comes after 15 years that have seen college football truly take hold nationally, its championship game eclipsing the World Series, NBA Finals and Final Four in television ratings, the combined annual attendance for NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision schools increasing by nearly 70 percent.

“After a lot of going back and forth,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said, “I think we really arrived at the sweet spot in terms of postseason college football.”

Hancock, Delany and the game's other power brokers insist the playoff format will not expand any time soon to an eight- or 16-team tournament, citing a $5.6 billion, 12-year broadcast deal with ESPN for the national championship game and widespread opposition among member institutions to extending the postseason.

Yet for others, such as Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, major college football remains a game in transition, a landscape that will be shaped not only by the continued outcry for an extended playoff but also by conference expansion, billion-dollar TV deals and a push for transformative change within the NCAA by the major conferences. Thompson and many others in conference and university offices, the coaching ranks and network headquarters are adamant that major college football will see an expanded playoff well before the ESPN contract expires.

“It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Thompson said. “The momentum has been building through the years and you're not just going to get the fourth- or fifth-best team argument (next season), which will happen. There's already clamor from the public for another round. I do not see a four-team playoff lasting for four years.”

Said Delany: “I think anybody who has been in our bubble of college sports for the last three years can't help but be fascinated by the rate of change that has affected all of us. There's good news and there's bad news. Sometimes we're able to capture the greatest finishes and the great championships. We also obviously have our problems which get the attention they deserve and we go about trying to cure them and make things better.”

Controversy has hounded the BCS since its inception before the 1998 season. Legislation directed at the BCS and major college football's postseason has twice been introduced in Congress. In the days leading up to 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the BCS, then-Sen. Joe Biden called the system “rigged” and “Un-American.” Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, once described the BCS as “cartel.” Even President Barack Obama has weighed in. In his first major interview after his 2008 presidential election, Obama criticized the BCS, making the case to “60 Minutes” that an eight-team playoff was change we could believe in.

Not surprisingly, the divide over the BCS' legacy stretches from The Swamp to The Farm.

“I think it will be a very positive legacy, especially in the rear-view mirror,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said. “It's been highly controversial, but … look at what it's done for college football. I mean college football is the second most popular league in the country after the NFL. You would be (hard-pressed) to find a sport in this country that got the trajectory of growth over the last five years that college football has.

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